Most discussed stories

writer’s block

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round & round this empty block again & again i go

The Crescent Caretaker

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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole where electric, shoeless uncles allocate their copper goulashes to catch white dripwater.

Cliche

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Six thousand dollars was a small price for a man's life. Mario was in the back seat of the Honda with Johnny next to him handcuffed, all tense. Francisco had it on a rap station, the sort of music that gave Mario a headache.

Who's Better: Michael Jackson or Shakespeare?

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I looked up “tupping.” It doesn’t have anything to do with Tupperware. It’s Old English for screwing. Just like a professor–make something harder so you’ll get it wrong on the mid-term.

Let's Walk This Dog

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if you don't quiver with anticipation you'll barely manage to explode

Whistle Stop

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Her eyes blaze through the green burka as her veil drops, revealing skull where face should be. Her teeth form a death grin, words pour from within, hollow like a baby's rattle. She speaks Farsi

The Perfect Command

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He stood in front of her. They stood eye to eye. "You aren't supposed to look me in the eye. If I were anyone else you would be smacked down on the ground right now. Treat me as you would a lover, your master."

Robots Among Us

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Father hands Billy a length of rope. Billy builds his resolve, fights back his tears, heads into the kitchen. It's time to become a man.

Loretta McKinley

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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.

Klondike

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"How could anyone say that I was wrong, that I was crazy?" These thoughts scraped across her mind and tore open the reasons she had knitted herself into over the years.

Just a Joke

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The pizza was perfect, ingredients genuine, not artificial: crust charred slightly; cheese gooey; sauce steaming, requiring careful eating lest the mouth suffer burns. Such quality was becoming rare around town. The product in Manhattan, by and large,

Leningrad's Sister City And Her Cuban Sandwiches

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It began not so innocently with voyeuristic tendencies. the sound of concrete and confetti in the night.

Quel Bordel

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Our friend, M. Dieu-Juste partnered in a used car business with a Vietnamese mechanic, Mr. Tran. Cars however, were not their only venture.

They know about fish

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A debacle has been scheduled for 11:45...

Ecce viator : Behold the Traveler

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The snake glides unhurriedly through the garden one warm July afternoon looking for a schmoose. Or barring such pleasant daytime passage, a shady snoozing spot. He twines himself about the gravid apple tree’s trunk caduceus-like, slithering his handsom

Deal Me Out

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Vegas is turning out to be my kind of town. Easy money, free booze, and everyone is too overstimulated to realize I’m broadcasting right into their noggins.

The Nanny

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     In the dark, alone after she was gone, he would whisper her name into his pillow and fight the tears more out of shear exhaustion than anything else. He had mourned for her even before she had passed, as he watched helpless while the disease marched slowly and…

Martini Business

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On Martini Business Nights the rules of decorum were written by Esquire or Playboy.The red bar-side book divulges the secrets brewed with ice, libation and a sleek chrome shaker, because its all about the accoutrement, and technique. Mr Boston said that, NOT James Bond. If…

The Art of Conversation

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The lounge in our hotel —— the Oregon coast —— one guest, wheelchair bound, in residence for the full summer season, asks us in her Main Line Philadelphia accent, "Have you come far?" "No, not far. Flew from Salt Lake…

Yuppies Fight Callous Image With "Tap Your Laptop" Day

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"When I knocked my laptop over,” he says, "four years worth of muffin crumbs shook loose on my desk. It got me thinking about those less fortunate than me.”

Beamers

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I try again. "You can make a big cup by putting your hands and fingers together, see?" He glares at me. "A giant could make a big cup," he says. "A giant could make a giant cup." I thought so before, and I’ll say it again. A little genius.

Assay the Assail

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No one is a Puritan under all that powder!

Shine

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not sure why - we rise

Fugue No. 4

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I am learning to write.

On the Anniversary of My Grandfather's Passing

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What I remember about my grandfather were his fart jokes. When he wasn't telling us kids about how young David defeated the mighty Goliath or how Saul the pharisee humbled himself to become Paul the Apostle, he was telling us about the baby burp that begg

Mom #2

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We’d sometimes find my mother asleep in her chair outside her trailer at the nudist camp when we drove up. She loved her garden there, even with the rabbits eating her young tomato plants. She used to coax the bluebirds down to the railing of her trailer

A Day in the Life of a Public Transit Mime

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We got a lotta people ruinin' the public transit experience. Talkin' loud on cell phones, clippin' fingernails, even flossing their teeth.

Autumn Day

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The wind whispered through tree branches and the underbrush with little fanfare. Trees creaked and moaned in response, their branches rattling together like the bones of a reanimated skeleton's hands. Leaves of all shapes and colors skittered across the ground as if they…

Wolf Moon

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Keeper of the balance. Husband of the night.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 6

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The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe